Reproduced below - let us know if you have any other ideas we can add to the list

1. Mobile Toplists
Toplists are basically directories of mobile sites where your position in the directory is determined by the number of "hits in" e.g. the number of visitors that you send to the toplist from your own site. The trick is to pick toplists which have enough traffic to make it worthwhile to add a link from your own mobile site and send them traffic to boost your site up the rankings. Mobile toplists are a fascinating area of the mobile web and one that deserves it's own post (watch this space). However, for starters, a couple of toplists with good traffic are http://surfwap.com (http://surfwap.com/), http://igloo.mobi (http://igloo.mobi/) and http://waptrack.net (http://waptrack.net/).

2. Mobile SEO
Mobile SEO is a real movable feast at the moment with Google changing the way it ranks mobile sites quite a bit recently (http://www.seoprinciple.com/google-just-killed-the-mobile-web/30/). However, it's still possible to get traffic from organic mobile search if you know what to do. Good general SEO practice is still valid (use of URLs, h1 tags and page titles) but there seem to be quite a few mobile tricks you can use. Follow a specialist mobile SEO blog like mobileSEOnews (http://www.mobileseonews.com/) or Bryson Meurnier (http://www.brysonmeunier.com/) to keep up.

3. Mobile Directories
Since the early days of wap there have been directories of mobile sites which you can submit your site to. Over the last couple of years a load more have sprung up, particularly with the launch of the dot mobi domain. Mobile directories have different policies for getting listed, some are very hard to get onto (a bit like Dmoz on the PC web) whereas others will list anybody. To check out a good list of some of these directories have a look at this post over on the Mobility.mobi forums (http://mobility.mobi/showthread.php?t=546).

4. Mobile Site Builders
Mobile site builders are a bit like the myspace or wordpress of mobile where you can easily build a mobile internet site either as a personal or business project. Often these site builders create a community around the different sites, allow users to search across this community and can also rank in the mobile search engines. Some of the major site building services are Pepperonity (http://en.peperonity.com/go/sites/mview/pepperonity), tagtag (http://tagtag.com/) and there are also some others which are popular overseas like wen.ru If you create sites using these services you are likely to pick up some traffic which you can then direct through links to your main site.

5. Promote your mobile URL
If you have a mobile site make sure you promote the URL on your PC website if you have one and on other forms of communication that you put out, including business cards, emails and so on. It's not just the main web address that you should be telling people about, also reference your mobile domain (e.g. m.domain.com, domain.mobi etc.

6. Link Exchanges
There are tens of thousands of small mobile internet site owners out there who are desperate to exchange links with you. Ok, so a lot of them will have hardly any traffic but in some cases they will be getting thousands of visitors a day, for example, many of the small sites ***ering Bollywood and Indian mp3 downloads and so on can get huge numbers of page views. You can find potential link partners on directories and toplists like surfwap.com (http://surfwap.com/). One issue when exchanging links is the placement - often a link exchange will start *** with a good position on the home-page and then get moved back into the site, or even disappear. A great way of managing link exchanges is to use the free mobile link tracking service ***ered by Bango analytics (http://www.crunchbase.com/product/bango-analytics) - this lets you check how many hits per day your link exchange partner is sending you, if they also do the same you can both optimize link placement to balance out the hits you are sending each other.

7. Recycle Admob credits
If you host admob (http://admob.com/) mobile ads on your site you can recycle your earnings into ads on the network. At the time of writing admob are giving a 20% bonus on any credit you send back through the system over a $50 limit. So if you recycle $100 you get $120 credit for ads on the network.

8. Mobile paid search ads
Just like on the PC web you can now buy ads linked to search results on the mobile search engines like Yahoo and Google mobile. There are a few issues with this at the moment - firstly there isn't anywhere near the same volume of mobile searches as on the PC so you are left with much lower click volumes on search terms. Its also harder to reach "long tail" keywords as users typically enter a much smaller number of words for mobile searches. However, it's probably worth getting to know the ins and outs and foibles of mobile paid search now and start experimenting as it is surely going to get more useful in the future, particularly as mobile affiliate schemes and m-commerce develop. If you are running premium mobile services already, then mobile paid search can still be an economic way of getting traffic.

9. Low cost ad networks
There are loads of mobile advertising networks you can use - some of them have very cheap prices if you are happy to get a small volume of clicks per day. For example, try using Buzzcity (http://buzzcity.com/) which can give you some cheap clicks, even for high cost countries like the UK.

10. SMS shortcodes
SMS shortcodes allow users to text a number and get a link to your site sent back to them. This is probably still the most effective way to push people onto a mobile site from a standing start - people like Jamba (http://jamster.com/)who spend millions of dollars a year on TV advertising for mobile services still promote shortcodes on TV rather than a mobile web URL. Not so long ago it was very expensive to get a shortcode setup and running. These days you can get one very cheaply or free from places like itagg (http://www.itagg.com/platforme.net) or textmates (http://www.textmarks.com/). Once you have a short-code you can promote it on flyers, websites and other places.

11. Tell a Friend Functionality

On the PC web 'tell a friend' functionality that fires up an email with a link to your site is quite common. The difficulty with mobile is that you are trying to reach people on their phone so email isn't ideal. One solution is to set up a similar system with SMS instead of email to allow users to text the site link straight to their friends phone. However, sites that have tried this have run into problem, for example Mippin found that users were sending SMS with a link and using the text space or even subject line as a way of sending free text messages (http://blog.mippin.com/2008/03/amusing-but-cautionary-sms-tale.html)! One option is to encourage users to send the a link to the site to a friend by letting them know they can do this in their phone menu.

12. Bookmark button
Once you have people on your mobile site it can be quite hard to keep them there - there is no URL bar on mobile so often people won't know how to come back. One way around this is to really push users to bookmark the site once they are on it. For example, Taptu (http://m.taptu.com/) have a prominent link (http://m.taptu.com/a/main?bkmk=1&ps=QbQ1) on their pages which says "If you like us bookmark us" and then takes you to a page with instructions of how to set up a mobile bookmark (http://m.taptu.com/a/main?bkmk=1&ps=QbQ1).

newdomainer

09-08-2008, 11:35 AM

I've printed that ***... neat little check list..

repped

Scandiman

09-08-2008, 01:16 PM

Some useful ideas there james, rep +

photoman

09-08-2008, 01:21 PM

I've found this article very informative, thanks for posting!

*james*

09-08-2008, 01:30 PM

thanks for the props guys - love the instant feedback on this forum :embarassed:

getsick

09-08-2008, 03:09 PM

bookmarked, rep+

Gerry

09-08-2008, 04:54 PM

Wow, James. Awesome To Do list.

Work In Progress

09-09-2008, 03:49 PM

Now that deserves a rep....:adore:

Thanks for the info James

frederix

09-09-2008, 07:21 PM

great post with cool ideas.
a particular point i am interested is the link exchange with other wapmasters, i really tried to exchange links without to much luck, even started a thread on this forum without getting a single link.
maybe is it time to develop a mobile exchange system ...

if anyone is interested on links let me know, i have a few sites for exchange.

capt. ahab

09-09-2008, 08:22 PM

Now that deserves a rep....:adore:

Thanks for the info James

I agree. Thanks James.......rep.

*james*

09-10-2008, 10:57 PM

thx guys

@frederix to get link partners try and get a decent position on surfwap, put something on your site saying you want link partners and provide an easy way to contact you e.g. guestbook email form and you should get people approaching you. Look on surfwap/ igloo for similar sites to yours and approach them is another way. Good luck.

veronique

09-23-2008, 05:11 PM

Creating a Mobile Internet site is a great thing! But that is only the first step. You need to drive traffic to your new site so that people start discovering it. This leads to the second step; Mobile Advertising. Word of mouth usually comes afterwards…

Let’s have a look at our different experiences with Mobile Advertising Networks. All the networks we’ve discussed in our Mobile Internet Publisher blog are also available to advertise on (that’s a no-brainer). Here are our thoughts:

Please note that for the moment, Agamata (http://www.agamata.com/) only purchases traffic on a CPC (cost per click) model. We do not have a problem with CPM, in fact we encourage as a publisher, but for the moment we are looking for a low acquisition cost.

Admob (http://www.admob.com/) :
Admob probably has the most traffic in *** portal Mobile Internet Advertising. We say probably because we don’t want to get into the numbers game… bottom line, as an advertiser, we are interested in traffic AND conversion. Speaking of which, Admob’s traffic has good conversion on the campaigns we run with them, in the different countries.

I own a mobile directory on TexoMobile.Here are my experiences on driving traffic.

1. When there were very less websites on my directory,the traffic was drastically low.As my database grew,the traffic increased geometrically.Conclusion:The more content you have or the involving functionality,the more traffic you will get.

2. Again when there was very less content,Google and other SEs did not index my site properly and page rank was insignificant.The bigger the database grew and more frequently I started updating it,the better my rank became on Google and other SEs.Conclusion:Google likes huge and dynamic content (that was already so clear).

3. Widgets and Java Bookmarks:Some sites like my.getjar.com and goojet.com let you create an ***line presence of your site on a user's phone.This helped me very much to drive traffic.Conclusion:Mobile applications which can be downloaded for a quick access to your site are very much adoptable by and attractive to the users.

4. RSS and Atom feeds.My directory generates four feeds to let keep a track of new and popular websites,random site and site of the week,etc.This sparked a huge and instantaneous sharing of my directory content on sites like My Yahoo,Mippin and MSN Live.This helped me a lot to spread a word about my directory.Conclusion:If you provide a dynamic content,you should provide a feed for your content so that it can be easily shared online.

5. Social Bookmarking.I used Mobilised.net,Magnolia,StumbleUpon,etc.This helped me get a rough idea of how people perceive my site (on the basis of their ratings,comments and reviews) and helped me improve.It also increased my rank on SEs and hence generated a significant traffic.Conclusion:Social Bookmarking is a very good idea to get public perception and yes,traffic.

These were specific experiences of my own.These may not be general but these worked for me.

Naiyer.

newdomainer

09-23-2008, 07:37 PM

Thanks Naiyer,

Useful advice - nothing beats wisdom learnt from experience..

repped

I own a mobile directory on TexoMobile.Here are my experiences on driving traffic.

1. When there were very less websites on my directory,the traffic was drastically low.As my database grew,the traffic increased geometrically.Conclusion:The more content you have or the involving functionality,the more traffic you will get.

2. Again when there was very less content,Google and other SEs did not index my site properly and page rank was insignificant.The bigger the database grew and more frequently I started updating it,the better my rank became on Google and other SEs.Conclusion:Google likes huge and dynamic content (that was already so clear).

3. Widgets and Java Bookmarks:Some sites like my.getjar.com and goojet.com let you create an ***line presence of your site on a user's phone.This helped me very much to drive traffic.Conclusion:Mobile applications which can be downloaded for a quick access to your site are very much adoptable by and attractive to the users.

4. RSS and Atom feeds.My directory generates four feeds to let keep a track of new and popular websites,random site and site of the week,etc.This sparked a huge and instantaneous sharing of my directory content on sites like My Yahoo,Mippin and MSN Live.This helped me a lot to spread a word about my directory.Conclusion:If you provide a dynamic content,you should provide a feed for your content so that it can be easily shared online.

5. Social Bookmarking.I used Mobilised.net,Magnolia,StumbleUpon,etc.This helped me get a rough idea of how people perceive my site (on the basis of their ratings,comments and reviews) and helped me improve.It also increased my rank on SEs and hence generated a significant traffic.Conclusion:Social Bookmarking is a very good idea to get public perception and yes,traffic.

These were specific experiences of my own.These may not be general but these worked for me.

Naiyer.

*james*

10-06-2008, 03:30 PM

sweet blossom - some really good ones there - i forgot about the mobile social bookmarking services - should try and update my post. thanks :adore:

andymoore

10-23-2008, 03:17 PM

I've been through many of the items on this list since Google updated so I've taken my bit, now it's time to give back a little too!

;)

Bluecasting / Bluetooth / Promiximity Marketing

I'm astounded! A friend of mine is a bit of a Luddite, he was that last person I know to get online and get a mobile, he works in marketing for an old fashioned solicitors and rang me one day to tell he walked into the ***ice to get a bluetooth message promoting the company beamed to his mobile!

It got me thinking so I invested in the hard and software to give it a shot today. I've created a new thread called promximity marketing (http://mobility.mobi/showthread.php?t=21595) as to not hijack this thread with a tangent....

Opportunities, opportunities, opportunities!!!

Got a site about football? Go to a match and beam your message and URL to the phones of the spectators!

Beam a message that initiates a premium SMS dialogue or premium mobile session to initiate commerce.

question is - is it legal to set up a bluecasting/ blip station and push messages to people without their permission?

personally i love getting stuff bluetoothed to me but others call it spam

Sweet-Blossom

01-04-2009, 02:42 PM

Andy,that is a *polite* sort of bluejacking! But it is absolutely repulsive.Most of the people will call it spam and most probably hate it.However,this will make your brand aggressively recognisable (It is the other matter that this recognition will be more in a negative sense than positive sense.)

Naiyer.

nbayclassifieds

10-05-2011, 12:35 AM

Wow. These are great tips!
Thanks for sharing this information. I will be back to share some of my techniques for promoting once I figure it out.

dewayez

05-07-2013, 08:45 AM

Thanks to all for sharing great ideas and tips about 12 Ways to promote your mobile site,.its really beneficial for many others to promote site easily through mobile,.

barbarahambly

06-26-2013, 10:46 AM

Really nice thread you have shared thanks for sharing it.

barbarahambly

07-13-2013, 12:23 PM

Is directory submission beneficial for mobile SEO? I got adverse effect of it on national SEO.